


Nothin' But Blue Skies

by allthebros



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 1988 bobblehead fic, Canon Era, Love Confessions, M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9473489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebros/pseuds/allthebros
Summary: Perhaps the middle of Wisconsin wasn't the right place to tell Jonny.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Coffeekristin's 1988 Bubbleheads Mini-Fest on tumblr. Thank you for organizing it!
> 
> Thank you a thousand times, as usual, to sorrylatenew for her support and cheerleading and hand holding, as well as going over it for me.
> 
> Title from Everlife's _I Can See Clearly Now_. It just kept popping up in my head as I wrote it.

 

 

They’re an hour into Wisconsin when he says it. 

It’s been building in his mouth since they left Chicago, and probably before that. Tucked in his cheek for months, years maybe, before he even knew it was there. It’s begging to be let out, to fill the nearly three hours of tense silence between them. It’s what Patrick should have said when Jonny showed up at his door, just in from Winnipeg the night before, ready to get on the road. It’s what he wanted to say, and would have said, except for how he wasn’t ready for it. Wasn’t expecting the shock seeing Jonny for the first time after coming to terms with all of it would have on him. Nor was he expecting Jonny to be so on edge, shifty and terse, which scraped Patrick’s nerves raw right away, exposed as he already felt.

They don’t even yell anymore. 

Jonny hates driving in the city. He’s always just this side of too tense about it, impatient and annoyed at everyone else on the road. But he loosens up as soon as he hits a highway--slides in his seat while his hands unclench the steering wheel and come down from their 10-2 position, knees opening, taking up space. Patrick's only been on the road with him like this a handful of times in all the years they’ve known each other, but it’s been enough to know that about him.

Jonny’s still clenching the wheel like they’re driving down fucking Michigan Avenue. 

Patrick isn’t sure when they stopped screaming at each other when they’re angry. When they feel like the other is wrong or being an asshole. He’s not sure what to do with this fucking silence that builds and builds in the cool air of Jonny’s car, with the bright, sunny Wisconsin landscape outside the windows.

Patrick needs to say something. It should be something banal. He should be asking about Jonny’s family. He should say he’s sorry for being a jerk. He wants to yell at Jonny’s tense profile, at his clenched jaw, at his whole face until Jonny’s pushing back. Fuck, he’d take the stupid country music he knows is in the stereo that neither of them has been willing to make a move to start. Like it would be admitting something. 

But it’s been building inside him for so long, and it’s right there on his tongue. Right in front of all the other words he thinks of saying. The first thing to tumble out of his mouth when he finally opens it, too smooth and fast to do anything about it but let it happen. 

“I love you.”

There’s a second where the silence gets thicker. Thick enough, Patrick’s words get stuck in it, suspended between them as obvious as a flashing neon sign. 

Jonny crashes it all down with a loud, “motherfucker!” and a swerve of the wheel that sends the car into the shoulder of the road, and then to a sharp stop.

“What the hell?” Patrick yells, gripping the handle above the door even as Jonny puts the car in park, and pulls on the emergency brake. 

“No you, what the hell!” 

Patrick’s heart is fucking hammering against ribcage, pumping adrenaline like crazy and he’s not sure if it’s because of Jonny going Fast and Furious on his ass or because of what he just said.

“Are you trying to fucking kill us?” His hands shake. “Jesus Christ, Toews.”

He doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to see Jonny’s face, but he glances all the same. First to Jonny’s hands still on the wheel, clenching and unclenching, and then up. A quick dart of the eyes--all he can manage--but enough to catch Jonny’s open mouth, his incredulous glare.

He missed a spot on the hinge of his jaw when he shaved and Patrick’s eyes catch on it. It’s the most stupid thing to get fixated on.

He snaps out of it when a semi drives past, honking, fast enough it makes the car shake. It’s so loud either of them would have to yell to get heard. 

“Fuck, just--” Pat reaches out and slams the hazards on. “Just fucking--”

He slides his hand under his thigh, turns his head to look outside, avoiding Jonny’s faint reflection in the glass. Wisconsin sucks.

His own words keep repeating in his head--a loop of ‘I love you’s in his own voice--to the point where he feels like there’s a possibility he didn’t say it out loud. An uncertainty he could almost believe if not for the fact that they’re still stopped on the shoulder of Highway 90 and he can feel Jonny’s eyes on him. 

The fucker’s got a pretty powerful glare. 

After a long moment filled only with the sound of the hazards, Jonny takes a deep breath--shaky on the inhale, impossible to know from what--and gets the car back into gear and onto the road without a word.

The angry and annoyed thickness of the earlier silence is back with a vengeance almost immediately. It pushes at Patrick. He’s exposed again, feeling raw, and every minute of quiet is like a harsh poke to a bad bruise. 

On and on, it keeps repeating in his head, the same words. They build again under his tongue, faster than before, like saying them once set something inside him in motion. He wants to use them to push at Jonny the way Jonny’s silence pushes at him.

He clenches his jaw on it and reaches out for the stereo. Country music fills the car almost immediately, already kind of loud but Patrick cranks it up anyway. Let some cheesy cowboy singing an ode to his fucking tractor fill the silence instead of him. He’s only got one thing to say anyway, and he’s not saying it again. 

For good measure, he lowers his window. The wind hits him hard and warm. He leans his head on the side of the car, and closes his eyes.

He doesn’t know how long he stays like this, hoping against all hope to fall asleep the rest of the way--another three or four hours at most. He doesn’t, though, can’t quite keep his eyes closed long enough to even pretend like he is. Every time he opens them, he catches himself in the side mirror, stares at his own reflection, eyes squinted against the sun. 

He sees a sign for Warrens just before he’s jerked to the side as Jonny swerves on the shoulder again, not as fast as before but just as surprising, enough to send Patrick’s heart beating fast.

His shoulder slams on the door. “Fuck!” 

Park. Emergency brake. Hazards. And then Jonny’s turning toward him, as much as his seatbelt will allow.

Patrick glares at him but pinches his lips together. The dude on the stereo is singing about his pickup truck now. 

Jonny shuts the music with a slam of his palm on the button, and the sudden silence rings loud in Patrick’s ears. Rings like the ‘I love you’ he dropped several miles behind, still hanging out between them with no intention of going away.

He wanted to say it, is the thing. Once he figured it out, once he got there in his mind, he was always going to tell Jonny. So the feeling of wanting to take it back bouncing around in his chest, has nothing to do with not meaning it, and more to do with the fact that Wisconsin might not have been the best place to say it.

Jonny looks at him, brows slightly furrowed and Patrick forces himself to look back, presses his hand on his knee to stop his leg from jiggling.  
Jonny doesn’t look any less annoyed than he’d been this whole trip, but when he says, “did you mean it? What you said,” it comes out softer than Patrick thought it’d be. Curious and demanding at the same time. The voice Jonny uses on the guys when he’s willing to help them with their bullshit as long as they don’t fucking lie to his face.

And Patrick’s not going to lie. He’s not going to pretend he didn’t mean it even if Jonny is being a jerk of epic proportions right now. Patrick’s not sure that there’s anything Jonny could do or say that would not make it true, in some way. He can’t take back having said it, but he also can’t take back knowing it. Can’t unsee it, unfeel it. Forget about it and pretend it’s not there, because he’s done that, he knows, even while not being that aware. He didn’t want to be aware. But now he is. He is so aware of it that it fills and fills and fills him until it’s the only thing that really wants to come out.

But fuck if he’s going to say it again. So he clenches his teeth on the words he won’t repeat, still building there around his tongue, gathering speed in his throat, and he pushes out a, “yes,” instead. He makes it as true and unwavering as the ‘I love you’ he won’t take back.

Jonny’s frown deepens. Confused for a moment before he nods, once, turns around in his seat, hands in 10-2 position on the wheel again. Patrick watches him, holds his breath. Follows the line of his forearm with his eyes from his elbow to his fingers. He’s still wearing that friendship bracelet his cousin made him before the playoffs, and despite himself, Patrick smiles. Feels the ‘I love you’ inside him soften with fondness. He bangs his head on the headrest with a small groan, rolling it to the side to look out again. Look away.

Hazards off. Left flasher on. Emergency brake down. And they are back on the road.

Jonny turns the music back on, but lowers the volume until it’s only a warm flow of chords mixed with the wind. 

It’s there, still. It’s right there. Between them and in Patrick’s head: I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love youIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou--

He’s going to need Jonny to do something about it soon. It’s all tied up on his end now. He’s holding Patrick’s words at the end of this elastic and Patrick’s just waiting to see if he’s going to let go, if it’s going to come back to hit him in the teeth like a puck to the face. 

Patrick’s not a fan of pucks in his face. They hurt. 

The day continues to be blinding and warm, and it would be nice, normally, to get his feet on the dashboard and recline his seat, to bask in it while Jonny drives them through Wisconsin and into Minnesota. He hums sometimes, Jonny, off-key and horrible but weirdly soothing, and that would be nice too.

Millston. Vaudreuil. 

Patrick’s attention is dragged away from the landscape back to Jonny, to the little erratic beating of his fingers on the wheel. Not at all in rhythm with the music playing. He’s got his left knee to the side, the way it gets when he drives like this, but it knocks periodically on the door, twitchy.

Patrick sits straighter, heart kicking up a notch in his chest, forcing himself to not hold his breath.

Jonny does nothing. He keeps on driving.

Black River Falls. Hixton. Northfield.

It twists and twists inside of him, that sense of expectation that doesn’t seem to want to resolve into anything.

They pass Osseo and Patrick thinks, maybe he could get out, rent a car, make his own way to fucking Minneapolis. Which would be ridiculous, but at least he wouldn’t be sitting in a car waiting to have his teeth metaphorically knocked out and getting angry at himself for the litany of words still chorusing in his head like a motherfucking symphony. 

But they pass the town and he says nothing, and Jonny is swerving to the side of the road again, stopping so abruptly Patrick’s seatbelt locks up when he’s sent forward.

“Jesus Christ, Toews!”

Jonny’s already put the car in park, already switched the hazards on. He’s unbuckling, getting out of the car.

“What the fucking fuck is he--” Patrick says, unbuckling as well, and opening the door, fucking ready to have at it on the side of Highway 94 in the middle of fucking Wisconsin. Fine. Yelling would be better than this anyway. Yelling he knows how to do.

He doesn’t get two steps out that Jonny’s already there, already on him, pressing him against the side of the car with his whole body. Patrick’s first instinct is to turn against it, like Jonny’s about to check him into the boards, and it takes him a second, but he realizes quickly that Jonny’s not angling for a fight. He’s not even manhandling Patrick into anything past that initial press. He’s just--not really hugging Patrick, hands on the car instead, but leaning into him, making himself felt all along him. He pushes his face into Patrick’s neck and breathes deep.

“Pat,” he says, very low, but it’s close enough to Patrick’s ear. Patrick’s name is thick with something that he can’t quite identify, but it spreads inside him all the same, shaky and warm.

Jonny turns his face deeper into the crook of Patrick’s neck, and Patrick tips his head back against the car. It’s hot at his back, and the sun is in his face, and he raises a hand to the back of Jonny’s head, his neck. Keeps him there while his other arm goes around his waist.

Jonny’s shaking almost imperceptibly, and the only reason Patrick feels it is that Jonny’s pressing harder still against him, in an effort to get closer. Patrick wants that too.

He swallows thickly, and blinks against the light. “Sorry,” he says. He means for being an asshole that morning. For dropping a bomb in Jonny’s lap somewhere he couldn’t get away from it. But there’s something in the press of Jonny’s body, the quiver of his whole self under Patrick’s hands. There are things he missed, he thinks, things he didn’t want to see. “Sorry it took me so long.”

Jonny laughs. Patrick feels his lips move under his jaw, across his skin.

A few cars drive past, then a semi. 

“I’d really love to like, make-out with you right now,” he says, running his fingers up the back of Jonny’s head.

Jonny pulls back, but stays close. Close enough to brush their noses together, so simple and small a thing, but it feels like a lot all the same. It feels like Jonny, like the prelude to something big. It lights up inside Patrick.

“Perfectly good hotel room waiting for us in Minneapolis,” Jonny says, pulling back even more now, but sliding his fingers along Patrick’s arm, holding on loosely to his wrist.

“Think you can get there without crashing us on the side of some Wisconsinan--Wisconsinite?--highway?”

He expects some eye rolling, but instead he gets this big, bright smile that takes over all of Jonny’s face, his whole body. Fucking angels are singing inside his head now, and his mouth is filling with it again, thick and sweet like honey.

“Hey,” Jonny says, tugging at his wrist. “Say it again.”

It spills out so easy. Easiest thing in the world. “I love you”

“Been wanting to hear that.”

“Yeah, well. Plenty more where those came from.”

And there it is, that smile again. 

Back in the car, Patrick leans his seat back, props his feet on the dashboard, and grabs Jonny’s phone. “No more dudes in love with their cars. Tractors are not that fucking great.”

Jonny only laughs, reaches out to crank the volume before Patrick’s even decided what he wants to listen to. That probably means true love, to be honest. 

Hazards off. Left flasher on. Emergency brake down.

“Hey,” Jonny says again. The landscape is flying by once more. They’re on their way.

“What?” Patrick looks up from where he’s still scrolling through Jonny’s playlists.

Jonny smiles quick at him, sunshine all over him. “Me too.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I post gifs and write ficlets on tumblr: allthebros.tumblr.com


End file.
